Users of mobile devices, such as cell phones, smart phones, personal digital assistants, portable media players, and portable gaming devices, have an increasing number of options to communicate with other users. For example, users may communicate with other users via email, instant messaging, SMS and MMS messaging, and via voice and/or video. Moreover, users increasingly have a number of social networking services that they may use to communicate with other users, such as by sending messages to other users via Facebook, mySpace, Orkut, and Twitter. The vast number of channels that users now have to communicate with other users has greatly expanded the use and enjoyment of mobile devices to stay in touch with friends, families, and colleagues.
While the proliferation of communication channels has provided great benefits to mobile device users, the number of channels has come at a price. Users are now inundated with messages from other users. For example, a user may receive voicemails from families, emails from work colleagues, instant messaging requests from friends, pokes on their Facebook profile, and the like. Learning of and accessing each of these messages requires a user to utilize different applications or different capabilities on their mobile device. For example, the user may be required to call a voicemail system in order to determine the number and identity of voicemails that were left for the user, use a browser application to log-on to a Facebook profile and see what messages are waiting to be read, and access an SMS or MMS messaging application to see what messages are waiting for review. Accessing other communication channels may involve even more onerous steps. Checking the status of each of these communication channels can be time consuming and extremely frustrating to users. The need therefore exists for a system that overcomes these problems, progresses the state of the art, and provides additional benefits.